Remember SFANS? Billed as the Switch dock that's small enough to fit in your pocket, it was crowdfunded last year to the tune of $130,000. We were lucky enough to get our hands on a pre-release version and came away sufficiently impressed to give it a hearty recommendation.

The trouble is, since then SFANS has had something of a torrid time. First up were the accusations that the device - like other Switch docks which appeared at the time - was made by repurposing Samsung products. Then, in October, it was announced that the SFANS would be subject to a delay due to a redesign.

This redesign didn't sit well with some fans, while others were willing to give the team behind SFANS the benefit of the doubt. Now the unit is finally arriving in the hands of backers and it's fair to say they're not all that impressed.

Nintendo Life reader KeithTheGeek sent us this message:

My dock appears to be a dud, unfortunately. As you can see in the image [shown above], there's a green light that comes on when it receives power, but the Switch never entered docked mode. I used my official Nintendo AC Adapter to test this.

I got mine a few days ago in Charlotte North Carolina. The number one complaint that I have is that is not two toned. its functionality works just about the same as if you would have bought the non brand adapters off Amazon, which I bought two but the time SFANS was released. The SFANS build quality is worst. I’m going to buy some plastic paint and just paint it myself.

I just received mine. I was super excited after using it once it won’t work anymore. It worked perfectly initially for maybe an hour. I took the thing downstairs and plugged it in to another TV and it wouldn’t want to transfer the picture. I tried everything including changing power cables (I’m using the Nintendo power adapter) and HDMI’s. Also doesn’t work on the upstairs Tv anymore. it just won’t output to any tv but it will charge the system. Any suggestions???

Signed up for a refund forever ago. Got my cheap looking dock yesterday. Not at all what I wanted. Already grabbed a cheaper adapter off Amazon months ago. I don’t even want to look at this thing. Just makes me mad.

Anyone who says this campaign is anything other than a con job is being disingenuous. I was promised a refund in “about 7-10 days” at the end of October when the prototype was completely changed without backer approval and this was a straight up lie. My several follow-up emails were ignored. This is the first and last indiegogo campaign that will have my support.

While I could rant about this being horrible quality, or the fact that they breached Indiegogo rules by changing the product post-funding, I want to focus on the worst part about this for me: They offered me a refund, sent me a form to fill out my details for the refund, then ignored my emails for two months, and proceed to send me the damn product! Not cool at all. And yeah, I’m not letting this thing interact with my Switch. If similar products are messing them up, this most definitely will.

We've reached out to the team behind SFANS and will update this post when (or indeed if) we hear back, but this appears to be quite a sad end to what was initially a very promising campaign.

Let us know if you backed SFANS - and what you think of the final unit - by posting a comment below.

Damien has over a decade of professional writing experience under his belt, as well as a repulsively hairy belly. Rumours that he turned down a role in The Hobbit to work on Nintendo Life are, to the best of our knowledge, completely and utterly unfounded.

I've only ever backed 1 thing in kickstarter... it's been 3 years and never seen anything for my $80You get what you deserve at this point backing empty promises. (Also don't @ me with some handful of games that actually happened, the list of things that are complete failures are 100/1)

I ask this question honestly, but what are the consequences to someone who has "breached Indiegogo rules"? Can they be sued by Indiegogo? Or is there a path to some sort of class action suit that now opens?Because maybe if the answer to these questions is "not much", perhaps that should be changed.

I like the idea of crowdfunding. I backed a few games years ago and all of them got released. Some of them were not as good as I hoped but there were no total failures.

However nowadays I only back campaigns were I know 100% what I'm getting. For example I bought several print releases of web comics I read. You can just read them for free online but I like to have them as real books and most of the time you get some exclusive extras like additional chapters or artwork.

I would never back a tech product, because the risk of something going wrong during manufacturing are pretty high, if the people doing the campaign don't have a lot of experience.

I'm not surprised. If it wasn't produced by Nintendo or its affiliates in some way or another, I can't see something like this turning out okay. Some folks will do anything for a quick buck, and that goes for both those backers and the people behind the campaign itself. Shoulda just bought a new Dock from Nintendo or something.

This is why I only back people with a history of delivering product. Ashens delivered both his books, Wayfoward and Shantae, or Zero Div and Skull Girls. Backing companies of unknown presence or worse no prototype is a get what you pay for. It's why I refused to back Might Number 9. A dude who worked on franchise for years leaves to pull a black jack and hookers stunt.

I built my own dock in about an hour out of an old piece of 2x4. It doesn't output to the tv, it's just a stand for the back seat of the car and it lets the boys play while it's charging, but it didn't cost me anything.

In case anybody is wondering, the Switch screen is actually a bit too small for 2 player gaming in the back seat. My kids tried Snipperclips Plus and Lego Marvel 2 but decided the screen was just to small to share in the back seat. Maybe if they sat next to each other and had it between them, but sitting by each window with the Switch in the middle is just too much distant they said.

The only thing I've ever backed was the return of MST3K and I was pleased in every sense by my experience with that. Nothing has ever caught my attention so much for me to try my luck again and there's WAY too many horror stories out there so I'm good. Feel for the backers but oh well. That'll learn em

I'm one of the unfortunate(/stupid) backers. I actually thought we wouldn't receive anything anymore after such a long radio silence. Let's see if and when I'll receive the product in the Netherlands. I'll wait to use it though untill I see it actually works and won't harm my Switch. It doesn't really matter to me that it looks crap btw. I've only backed it because I don't want to have to dismantle my original dock everytime I bring my Switch to friends, family or work. I need an extra dock for the portability purposes.

@mattmayatt Yes and no. I'm VERY happy with my Switch GripCase for instance. It's a wonderful product, and works just as well as advertised. At the early bird price it was also a bit of a steal imho. I used to like my Switch just fine (in portable mode), but now I absolutely love it. It's so comfy in my hand, I can dock it no problem, the quality of the actual grip case as well as the carrying case is pretty much flawless, and the material of the grip feels high quality as well.

I'm just saying that there were always failurs on KS (I was part of two myself, luckily there were just minor "investments" in games to the tune of like $10). I think that any investment carries a risk, and overall, I had almost exclusively good experiences all around. I'm extremely picky with my projects though, and all the two I consider I failure, stem from the first couple of months I was active on the platform. Since then, I have backed significantly less projects, maybe 2-3 a year at best, and those (so far) have panned out just fine.

A friend of mine, who bought a Switch recently, was really upset he couldn't get a GripCase right away. He was very impressed when he got hold of mine. He has pretty ... hefty hands, and as such he always felt rather crampy with my Switch after even a short while. The GripCase completely solved that issue, and he is now more than eager to get one for himself, once they're sold retail/Amazon.

@Razer@Rika_Yoshitake@mattmayatt Oh god. People. Read. Please for the love of god read the article. Kickstarter is a great and fantastic crowdfunding website. This was done on Indiegogo. Indiegogo has a different set of rules that easily let companies scam people. On Kickstarter you're not getting off that easily. There's been several attempted scams, but not any succesful ones (unless you count stuff like Mighty no. 9. Horrible game, but not a scam. Just a botched product.)

I wish Nintendo would just make their own (official) Travel Dock! The one bundled with the console isn't as conveniently portable as it could be - and a Mini/Travel option would be just perfect for gaming on the go...make it happen Nintendo! Being able to play Anywhere, Any time, with Anyone, on Any TV would be a dream come true!

Cheap people. Just buy the OEM dock and modify it to remove the pointless front plate. It's easy and mine looks fantastic, with OEM guts. Score it, cut it, dremel, there are countless ways to achieve the removal of the front piece.

@MFD I think the form is not optimal for portability. But even so, my dock is built in my media cabinet so it's hassle to bring. Furthermore, I don't always no when I'll used it docked when I have my Switch on the go. I do play Mario Kart (for instance) with other people at other places than my own.

If they're not refunding peoples money as far back as last year and still shipping, plus putting out something that isn't what is described, and/or is grossly broken or faulty in some ways out of the box they need to be sued by the entire lot of donors into oblivion. It's a fraud deal from the looks of it.

@Captain_Gonru unfortunately, the short answer is that there are no repercussions whatsoever. I was scammed once on Indiegogo (not for this product), and upon contacting them, was promptly shut down under the sob story of "we are all sad when a campaign doesn't end well". Except it makes no difference to them, they profit either way. They gave me the scammer's name and a defunct email address, which doesn't help me at all unless I feel like traveling to Florida to confront him myself. Then they stopped responding.

So the moral of the story is that these platforms do not care in the slightest that they profit off of scams repeatedly.

I have backed four projects on Kickstarter, only one of them tech- the icontrolpad 2. That one ended up in disaster, but eventually some of us got either partial refunds or an original icontrolpad (I got that one). For the three software titles, one shipped (Yooka-Laylee), the other is still progressing as far as I know (Bloodstained) and the other, the earliest of the three, still gets the occasional update, but who knows if it will see release after all this time (Two Guys SpaceVenture).

@MFD nah like I said: the design is suboptimal for me. It's larger than necessary and the plastic of the front and rear seem vulnerable. I'd usually carry it around squeezed in a full weekend bag, while using public transportation. Something more compact seemed more appealing. If Nintendo would release something like that for around 99 bucks I'd be happy.

Personally don’t see why this was ever a thing, as I see it as such a tiny thing to just unplug your dock carry it with you in a bag and take it to your friends or whatever. It takes me 30 seconds to unplug it and out it in my bag, the weight is nothing as I could give it to my 2 year old nephew to carry for me ( although he might throw it at a wall lol) and then setting up at my friends would take a minute!Is this so bad that people want to pay money to back something that is not Nintendo made or even guaranteed to deliver?One of my friend takes his around all the time whilst carrying his guitar and amp lol sorry but I don’t get the logic?!I mean how big was the original model? Was it actually pocket size??

I backed the C-FORCE, which does work as a portable switch dock. (The CF001 is what we got.) Its little stiff cord is awkward, but it does the job. They have iterated it since the original crowdfunding, and I can't speak to the iterated models. (However, it does NOT work as a USB-C hub on any device I've tried it with.)

I'm curious about the SwitchCharge, which I also backed, and which was also modified after the funding campaign ended. They claim the units have been shipped and are on the way ... so let's see if that will be as big of a debacle, or a success.

I still haven’t received mine. I thought I’d take a chance with indiegogo as the last campaign I helped fund turned out to be a scam (NuDock), and this has basically become the very thing I thought I wouldn’t see again.

It's also starting to look like the OJO SWITCH PROJECTOR is starting to scam. Everyone got tracking numbers before Xmas - nobody has received their OJO - OJO people post positive things everyday on the indiegogo campaign page before the campaign ends then go pretty much silent except for one"Buying time" post claiming export problems from Hong Kong. It's pretty likely that the OJOs aren't made in Hong Kong - but the facts speak for themselves - They haven't given a projector for review to Digital Foundry or any Major Nintendo Websites - they seem to have bribed a couple of over-enthusiastic You-tubers. . . . . I would say they are buying time as they've spent the $250,000 dollars on Bitcoin. . .lol

I know we get mad at Nintendo sometimes for a variety of reasons, expensive parts, designs not exactly what we wish (i.e. the official dock), but you gotta hand it to them, we don't have nightmares like this. What a freaking mess this whole thing turned out to be. That's why I never crowdfund anything.

Aside from the thing not actually working, who on earth decided that sludge grey would be the ideal colour for any item, never mind a Switch dock?

People do need to understand that crowd funding anything is always going to be high risk - if it wasn't. the person/group/company would have found a backer without resorting to c/f. Great if it does turn out you get a product, but often you won't (or you'll be bitterly disappointed that the artist impression didn't translate into reality)

Well if you send someone money for nothing but a promise, that they will send you something back, chances are that the person will just take your money and you will never hear from them again.Never really understood the point of these business models.Maybe if you are dealing with someone, who is highly trustworthy. But with random people? meh.

"A Nightmare" Weeee - gotta love the modern hyperbole train. It's hardly that -"Oh yes, first off my dear, grey-hair, old, mother was peeled like a flesh-banana by roving bandits, then I lost seven and a half fingers to pulsing-satanic-scrofula, and all the while the mother of my 18 hard-of-hearing children was boffing our local Mortician! But all of that absolutely pales in comparison to that fact that my crowdfunded Switch dock was an absolute bloody shambles! What a bloomin' nightmare!" Je-sus, grab a seat and a definition, people!

@Morlock5K Things like Bloodstained aren't really crowd funded though. They're proper games with a proper traditional publisher agreement, and they (the publisher mostly) used Kickstarter purely as a "proof of concept" to gauge market interest. It was a risk reduction tool for a publisher rather than a funding source. I believe Iga said the Kickstarter covered maybe 1/10 the actual required budget....the rest is coming from the conventional publisher.

@dkxcalibur Something tells me if Kickstarter and Indiegogo prominently displayed that post in red text at the top of every page, they would be going out of business in short order. Their business model depends on that not being widely unknown, even though it's known.

A product or service that depends on glossing over the fact that it's not actually a great product or service kind of relies on misleading people even if it's simply stating the ugly parts in ways they known most people will ignore or not comprehend it.

"Spend money on a product made by complete amateurs in way over their heads with little to no mass manufacturing experience that may or may not actually be made, and currently has no working prototype, and hope you get it in a few years." isn't a winning sales pitch.

I received mine a few weeks back. So far, so good - apart from the change in design (which I'm still not happy about). Only difference is that it doesn't 'control' your TV like the official dock does - you have to manually select the HDMI source yourself. That could be the issue that some of the people listed above are running into, as we're now so used to the official Switch dock turning on our TVs and hopping to the correct HDMI source automatically.

EDIT: Just read one of the comments in the article - I too requested a refund a while back, and they ignored my emails and simply sent me the product instead. I'm in the process of chasing them up as the product is not as initially advertised - and I'm skeptical of it malfunctioning after some time as per the comments above.

EDIT #2: Ladies and gentlemen, my skepticism proved to be correct - I can now say my SFANS is no longer alive. A great experience for all of two weeks, with less than a handful of uses. Email number 476 is on its way to them now...

This is essentially an 'I told you so', but why did anyone even pledge to that project when there was already an affordable DIY-dock available since summer?
I bought this (of course you can also get it in other countries, maybe under a different name) over 7 months ago for 20€ - now it's even cheaper - and it's perfect in every aspect! Don't be scared of disassembling your dock and assembling it back into this one - it's not that hard (but definitely worth it)!
Whoever designed that awful original dock housing at Nintendo should be fired immediately. They should hire whoever designed the smaller one instead.

@macaron75 Sorry, but you obviously don't know anything about crowdfunding. It's not about 'scams or crappy copies'.
Most crowdfunding projects are actually innovative solutions. That's the whole point of crowdfunding: inventing something new and useful that nobody (or at least no big manufacturer) has thought of before.

@AWeirdGlacier What does that have to do with anything? You can pre-order non-crowdfunding products before they're produced as well.

@mattmayatt same here got about 2 things from it. Which were both great but the rest either still waiting or given up hope. Wont even look at anything on any crowd funding just littered with con men and muppets

@retro_player_22 To their credit, the original version of this was a very small low profile dock. I was curious about it for playing fighting games on the go (not enough to back...I don't believe in crowdfunding) myself.

@retro_player_22 Nintendo most certainly does not give you a dock for free with the purchase of your Switch... Why do you think the thing costs $300? Because of all the stuff included in the package. If they didn't include the dock (and no reason to include an HDMI cable without a dock) then I suspect the Switch would cost as little as $220. But they would want that nice round number so they would sell it for $250 of course!

@TheLobster Yes the dock is free, the 32gb Switch tablet itself is $200, then you add the price of the pair of Joycon which is $80 then you add the $20 power adapter (if the retail price cost more than this then you just save whatever the extra price the retail sell) and there you have it, $300. The price of the dock ($90) and the HDMI cable ($10) already save you $100 so those you get for free with all the other junks. The only thing you need to buy separately is the game Doom and the 128gb microSD card which you'll need if you want to play multiplayer on Doom. So by buying the Switch package itself you basically pay less than if you were to buy these separately plus you get the free dock. Now stop ranting about stuff that's free.

Backed the Switch GripCase project on Indiegogo and received a really nice product that really really feels nice and gives the Switch a superb grip... Sometimes crowdfunding works. But in this case it definitely didn't...

What’s with all the sweeping “Crowdfunding sucks”-statements here? It’s just a matter of checking is the people running a campaign have any experience in their field.

I backed several campaigns so far: the NES and SNES books featured here on NintendoLife (By a company with more retrogaming books under their belt), “Shantae: half-genie hero”, by Wayforward, some card games by people who had a manufacturer ready by the time they ran their campaign, they all had one thing in common: they either were or were working with somebody with experience.

Sure, approach “This is the first time we’re doing anything like this”-campaigns with caution, but saying “Crowdfunding sucks because some campaigns fail” is a bit overly simple...

@JoeyJoeJoe the front plate may be only plastic but it shuts down even the slightest idea of two screen play and helps to clarify the messages of what the Switch is (and isn’t). This is no wiiU2. Also it must be easier for the younger gamers to slide it in the dock with the front plate. On the face of it, it’s seems an odd choice but I personally think it’s very clever.

So I agree on all the comments here that the backers (including me) shouldn't complain too much about the way the project turns out.

But for the people raising arguments like 'Why on earth would you buy a small third party extra docking station?!?! You're crazy and stupid!!': Consider that other users have other needs. Some people like to spend some extra bucks on some extra convenience and don't mind taking the risk. Don't insult people with different needs or opinions, if you are the one who is so shortsighted not to be able to understand or value these needs and ideas.

Then again... Why am I troubling to post this when a lot of these people only go to forums and discussion boards to insult people and propagate their own superiority in the first place.

@beazlen1 Good point about the front plate assisting younger people with the insertion and removal. I made this modification on day two, after reading about the damage the dock can cause. I only got my switch this month though. Function over form for me. WIP https://ibb.co/dUPuom

I supported more than 110 projects on Kickstarter and the likes. The most common trouble are delays in the reach of more than six months. Other than that I had 3 foul players (pebble being the greatest, damn fitibit....) Crowdfunding is a dangerous thing but for me, it was mostly rewarding so far. Now let's talk again when Pelda Pro arrives.

Every game I've backed has continued to be shipped out or show updates that they are on their way with pictures and video of production. You have to know what to back. Stay away from techy things, games are a safe bet and the only things I will back. Tech needs to be finished and working before I will buy it.

Another fine example of why I do not support crowd funding anything. I am not a bank and there enough actual products out there to buy that I am not going to give my money for something that I can’t immediately get.

I've backed a number of projects on Kickstarter and haven't really been "duped" on any of them. Mighty No. 9 turned out to not be very good, but the number of board games and Video Games Live albums I've received through this more than make it obvious that crowd funding -can- and -does- work, but like anything, It might require a bit of research into who and what you're buying into beforehand.I've had plenty of things /look/ good but not be good in things that are already out. Movies, games, and board games that I played in person at a convention have all had their share of already being released, and still being bad.Long story short? Don't hate the system, hate the jerks who abuse it.